Ghost Soldiers is a dazzling account of one of World War II’s greatest rescue missions, written by Hampton Sides.

For the American soldiers surrendering on the Philippine peninsula of Bataan in April 1942, their war was just beginning. Forced to march through some 120km of miasmal swamps, they died of disease, water deprivation and brutality at a rate of 500 a day.

Those who survived the Bataan Death March were sent to languish in prison camps, the largest and most deadly of which was Cabanatuan.

By 1945, with the able-bodied prisoners shipped to work in Japan, its population had dwindled to the sickest and the weakest: the ghosts of Bataan.

To rescue them involved travelling deep behind enemy lines, trekking 48km through jungle and swamps crawling with Japanese troops.

A recent prison massacre by the enemy elsewhere in the Philippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time to plan the complex operation.

When Lt-Colonel Henry Mucci, commanding officer of the 6th US Ranger Battalion, announced the operation to his troops, the risks were such that he only wanted volunteers. He said: “I only want men who feel lucky.”

Published by Little, Brown and Company UK in 2001.It is soft cover, measures 23.5x15cm and has 342 pages, including maps and black and white photos.

There are a couple of loose photo pages, and the cover shows signs of wear, but is otherwise intact.

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